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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22521964">Coffee After Midnight</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/redgoldblue/pseuds/redgoldblue'>redgoldblue</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Suits (US TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Actually just, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mike has PTSD, Nightmares, Post-Prison, Protective Harvey, Soft Harvey, is there some sort of accepted Suits tag for that? it'll do, mentions of Donna &amp; Jessica &amp; Louis, soft Marvey, well technically not because it's too soon. not to get all DSM-IV on you</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-02-02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-02-02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-04-28 11:20:52</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,291</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22521964</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/redgoldblue/pseuds/redgoldblue</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Mike has trauma from Danbury; Harvey has trauma from not being able to fix it. But they're figuring it out.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Mike Ross/Harvey Specter</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>8</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>117</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Coffee After Midnight</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>So. Anyway. I'm emotional about Harvey Specter. Can't believe I have two posted Suits fics when I wouldn't even place it in my top five fandoms but that's the power of Marvey for you I guess.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Harvey awakes in the middle of the night, and it takes him a few moments to hear what it is that woke him up; the muffled sound of quiet crying, drifting from the room across the hall and through his now permanently open door. He rises, cold air striking his skin, and pads across.</p><p> </p><p>The first night back, Mike had slept in the bed with Harvey, and it had been almost like before except that when Harvey rolled over in the middle of the night and reached out to him, he flinched away, and when the first rays of sun pierced past too-hastily drawn curtains at 5:30am and woke Harvey up, the bed was empty; Mike was standing in the kitchen, staring at the kettle as it boiled, something behind his eyes that Harvey knew he couldn’t access. The next night, Harvey had come out of the bathroom and Mike had been asleep on the couch, and he looked so much stiller and deeper in sleep than the night before, if not any more peaceful, that Harvey had gently settled a blanket over him, and gone to bed alone, as he had been for three months. The night after that, and every night since, Mike has gone to the guest bedroom, and Harvey has stopped himself from asking why every time the question has risen to his lips, telling himself that Mike will talk about it when he’s ready. He hasn’t yet.</p><p> </p><p>He hesitates a moment before opening what now seems to be Mike’s door, but when he hears sobs again, his brain wryly offers up ‘probable cause’, and he pushes the door open. Mike is still firmly asleep, lying on his side with eyes shut, still apart from his chest occasionally heaving. Harvey takes a deep breath, and then another, trying to bring himself to a state where he’ll be able to do more than magnify Mike’s distress back at him, then he silently drags the chair over to the bedside, and reaches out to touch Mike’s arm.</p><p>He wakes up in an instant and throws himself to the other side of the bed, terror in his eyes, and seeing Mike scared of him, even only for a few brief seconds in that state halfway between sleep and waking, feels like someone has thrown Harvey’s heart onto the floor and stomped on it. He swallows, and manages to get “Mike,” out past the lump in his throat. “It’s okay.”</p><p>Mike blinks, and his eyes clear. He crawls back across the bed and sits on the edge facing Harvey, scrunched small with his legs drawn up underneath himself. He’s wearing one of Harvey’s old sweatshirts that’s two sizes too big even for Harvey, and drops down from Mike’s shoulders like a blanket. These days he’s only wearing clothes that are either three sizes too big for him or just a little too tight.</p><p>Mike is the first one to reach out a hand, and Harvey responds with relief, folding it in both of his own, fingers resting over Mike’s pulse, which gradually slows. </p><p>“I’m sorry,” is the first thing Mike says, and it throws Harvey enough that it takes him a minute to reply.</p><p>“Why?” he finally says.</p><p>“For waking you up. For scaring you.”</p><p>“You didn’t scare me. You could never scare me,” he says, not doubting those words even as he recalls the certainty he would once have had in stating the reverse.</p><p>“Worrying you, then,” Mike amends, and Harvey smiles shakily.</p><p>“I’ve been worried about you for three months, I don’t think it’s going to stop any time soon.”</p><p>“Was it really only three months?” Mike wonders, and Harvey manages to laugh.</p><p>“That’s what the calendar tells me. I don’t believe it either.”</p><p>“Three months. I haven’t even been out three weeks yet.”</p><p>“I know.” Mike’s free hand is fiddling with the hem of the sweatshirt, a nervous tic that Harvey knows only serves to drive up his anxiety. He takes one hand away to place it over the jittering fingers, spread over Mike’s slightly smaller hand, and he waits until the movement stops to bend his fingers and pull towards him until their intertwined hands are resting at the edge of Mike’s lap. He makes sure his fingers are still laid over Mike’s heartbeat, and it’s grounding him as much it’s letting him check on Mike.</p><p>Mike sighs, and his shoulders drop. “I’m sorry,” he repeats. “Just because I’m awake in the middle of the night doesn’t mean you have to be.”</p><p>“You think I’m going back to bed and leaving you awake?” Harvey asks incredulously. “You don’t know me as well as I thought you did. I haven’t changed that much in three months.”</p><p>Mike lets out half a laugh. “No, I know you won’t.” He lifts their joined hands and kisses the back of Harvey’s, and the gesture is so soft and so much Mike’s that Harvey has to take a deep breath to prevent tears forming.</p><p>“I love you,” Harvey says, and Mike looks up in mild surprise.</p><p>“I love you too,” he replies. “I don’t think I can go back to sleep, though.”</p><p>“Come back to bed with me?” Harvey asks, and it’s half-offer and half-plea, but Mike shakes his head anyway.</p><p>“I don’t think I should go back to sleep,” he elaborates.</p><p>“Okay. Then come into the living room and I’ll make coffee. Or tea. Maybe we shouldn’t be drinking coffee after midnight, anyway.”</p><p>“Coffee after midnight,” Mike murmurs. “Good band name.”</p><p>“Good band name,” Harvey agrees. “Bad life choice.”</p><p>“Do we have to worry about life choices right now?”</p><p>“No,” Harvey acquiesces, standing up and pulling Mike slowly to his feet. “You want coffee, I’ll make you coffee.”</p><p>“That’s why I love you.”</p><p>“What, because I can’t say no to you?”</p><p>“Exactly.”</p><p>“Cheeky,” Harvey teases, grinning at him.</p><p>An answering smile skitters across Mike’s face as they walk side by side down the short hallway.</p><p> </p><p>Harvey turns on a single lamp in the living room, leaving them with enough light to see each other by but not enough to break the steady stillness that is borne of being wilfully awake while an entire city sleeps.</p><p>Mike pauses to stare out over the balcony, and Harvey can’t help thinking that even though this was where he’d been living before, that view must have been half the reason he came back here. He can’t imagine having been restricted from seeing anything past a prison yard, but he does remember the stifling feeling of never having a view past the next street. There’s a reason he has both an office and an apartment that show him an entire city, and that’s something he wouldn’t give up for anything.</p><p>When Harvey moves into the kitchen, though, flicking on the counter lights, Mike pads over as well, and swings onto a barstool on the other side of the bench. The sound of clinking mugs and the kettle boiling fill the silence rather than breaking it, until Harvey pours the water into the plunger and turns around to see Mike watching him.</p><p>“I’ve always been shocked you don’t have an espresso machine, you know?” he says when their eyes meet.</p><p>Harvey shrugs. “I hardly ever have coffee at home. I always figured if the plunger in the break room was good enough for me there, it’d be good enough here. Besides, I used that one so often after Jessica brought me upstairs, making coffee for- well, I was going to say the senior lawyers, but everyone was senior to me- that it’s sort of comforting now.”</p><p>“Ah, so that’s why you kept sending me on coffee runs when you first hired me.”</p><p>“I just wanted to make you suffer like I had,” Harvey agrees, pouring the coffee.</p><p>Mike accepts his mug with a soft smile, wrapping his hands around it and just holding it in front of himself.</p><p>Harvey shuffles around, cleaning the plunger and putting the coffee away. When he’s done, Mike stands up and moves to the couch, and Harvey follows him.</p><p>“It wasn’t just because of the sleeping thing,” Mike says, once they’re seated. He’s looking straight ahead, rather than at Harvey, which is what, more than his words, makes Harvey sit forward and listen.</p><p>“That I wouldn’t come to bed with you,” he continues. “It’s the same reason I’ve been sleeping in the guest bedroom. I don’t…”</p><p>He pauses, and starts again. “I was on edge every minute in prison, and I was afraid for my life for a lot of them. And that didn’t go away when I went to bed, not after that first night. So even though Kevin was in the room with me, and that was safe, no-one was touching me. No-one was supposed to be touching me, and I didn’t sleep properly for three months because my body was primed to jump awake at anyone coming near me. And the-” He gives a crooked smile, and the upwards tug of his lips feels directly attached to the tug on Harvey’s heart. “The guest bedroom isn’t terrific either, because no bedroom’s going to be – it’s the closest analogue to a cell, and I got attacked twice in one of those. But when I was in the bed with you, every time you moved – more, every time you touched me – I’d jerk awake, thinking I- I needed to move, to defend myself. I don’t want you touching me to feel like that. I didn’t want to risk making it feel like that all the time.”</p><p>Harvey reaches out for him, body moving on autopilot, but Mike shifts closer. The relief that it has nothing to do with Harvey himself is very nearly swamped by the helplessness that his brain is screaming at him.</p><p>“I’m sorry,” Harvey says, aware of the foolishness of those words but unable to find any better. “I don’t know how to help, but… we’ll figure it out. Step by step. What if I stay awake and make sure I don’t touch you?”</p><p>Mike looks at him for the first time since the kitchen, a fond smile on his face. A small smile, for him, but Mike never does anything by halves. Affection or panic. “For how many nights? You still have to go win cases in the day, I’m not having you half-crazy from sleep deprivation.”</p><p>“So what do we do?”</p><p>“I don’t know,” Mike says, somehow resigned. “But I’m sure Pearson Specter Litt’s two brightest stars can figure it out somehow.”</p><p>“Don’t let Jessica hear you say that. Or Donna.”</p><p>“Jessica’s the moon. I don’t know what Donna is, but I have a feeling it might be the sky. Or possibly God.”</p><p>Harvey wraps an arm around Mike’s shoulders, and Mike falls slightly into him. “Oh, she’s definitely God,” he agrees.</p><p>“Mmm. Maybe she can fix it.”</p><p>“Probably. She’d never let us live it down, though.”</p><p>“You mean she’d never let you live it down. She likes me,” Mike counters sleepily, reaching out to put his coffee mug down.</p><p>“Hey, she liked me before she even met you.”</p><p>“Yeah. She loves you. That’s why she bullies you.”</p><p>“She loves you too. You got yourself into this by being too lovable.”</p><p>“She still bullies you more. It’s hard to bully me. I’m too adorable. Unless you’re Louis.”</p><p>Harvey laughs. “Louis would bully a kitten if you caught him in the right mood. And you’re less adorable than you were six years ago, so one of these days it’s going to fail you.”</p><p>“That’s not something a loving boyfriend would say.”</p><p>“Sorry,” Harvey says without remorse.</p><p>“And it’s already failed me.” Mike turns his face into Harvey’s shoulder, and appears entirely ignorant of the crack in Harvey’s heart that he’s just struck. It doesn’t matter how many people – including himself – tell him that it wasn’t his fault, he knows he’s never going to stop feeling guilty for Gallo.</p><p>“I’m sorry,” he repeats.</p><p>There’s no response from Mike, and Harvey realises that his breathing has evened out into sleep. He tucks his own legs up onto the couch and closes his eyes. The coffee goes cold that night.</p><p> </p><p>Harvey surfaces slowly, as quiet morning light begins to seep through the windows behind them. At some point in the few hours they have been asleep, they have shifted around, so Harvey’s back is now against the arm of the couch, Mike half in his lap, head resting against his chest. He is heavy, and warm, and now that Harvey’s awake he’s aware of the cricks in his neck and the stiffness in his legs, but he would walk to hell on Sunday before he’d move from this spot. So instead he folds his arms tighter around Mike, and he drifts in and out of sleep until Mike begins to stir.</p><p>Mike blinks awake as the sun rises, and frowns up at Harvey for a moment.</p><p>“Good morning,” Harvey says softly, and the frown clears. He stretches, and silently pokes at Harvey’s arms. Harvey hrmphs grudgingly, making Mike grin up at him, and lets go. Mike pushes himself up into a sitting position, and Harvey follows, most of his muscles complaining.</p><p>“Morning,” Mike murmurs, twisting to look at the rapidly brightening sky. “First steps, huh?”</p><p>“First steps,” Harvey echoes. Mike reaches out for his hand and takes a deep breath, then turns to smile at him.</p><p>“I love you.”</p><p>Harvey leans forward, and Mike meets him in the middle in a soft kiss. When they break apart, rather than pulling back, they stay there, foreheads touching.</p><p>“Love you too,” Harvey murmurs, and squeezes his hand.</p><p>Mike’s pulse is slow and steady as he replies, “Here’s to figuring it out.”</p>
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